Faculty for Undergraduate Sociology Studies at Sarah Lawrence College

Sociology Faculty

James S. Bowen

B.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University. J.D., Yale Law School. Special interests in law, sociology, and black studies; areas of academic specialization include affirmative action, constitutional law, sociology of law, blacks and the law, jurisprudence, critical race theory, and reparations. SLC, 1990-1994; 1996-

Gwendolyn Dordick

B.A., University of California-Los Angeles. M.A., Ph.D. in Sociology, Columbia University. Taught at Hamilton College from 1993-1997; previously taught at Harvard University; areas of expertise include urban sociology, poverty and homelessness, and ethnographic field methods; author of Something Left to Lose: Personal Relations and Survival Among New York's Homeless and articles on poverty and homelessness in urban America; current research concerns the intersection of housing and recovery; writing a book tentatively entitled, The Road to Nowhere: Liberal Compromises, Public Policy and the Reality of Housing the Homeless; argues that the new housing policy's merger of recovery and housing has the unintended consequence of replacing one form of dependency with another, rather than creating the 'independence' its creators promised. SLC, 2004-

Toi James

B.A., University of Michigan. M.A., Ph.D., University of California-San Diego. Academic interests include children’s studies and inter-ethnic communication; methodological specialties are in discourse analysis, ethnography, and media analysis; special emphasis on cooperative communication in diverse communities and equalizing educational provisions for children in underserved areas; American Educational Research Association/Spencer Fellow and University of California President’s Dissertation Fellow. SLC, 2005-

Patrisia Macías

Courses: Borders, Boundaries, and Belonging, Race in a Global Context

B.A., Sarah Lawrence College. M.A., Ph.D., University of California-Berkeley. Research interests include international migration, border controls, human smuggling, the penal state, race relations, ethnographic methods, and social theory; current project examines the role of states, smugglers, vigilantes, and NGOs in regulating clandestine migrations at the U.S.-Mexico border; recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, Andrew Mellon Program in Latin American Sociology, Social Science Research Coun- cil, and Center for Latino Policy Research at the University of California-Berkeley. SLC, 2007-

Shahnaz Rouse

Chair, Social Science; Alice Stone Ilchman Chair in Comparative and International Studies

Courses: First-Year Studies: (Re)Constructing the Social: Subject, Field, Text, Gender and Power in the “Muslim” World

Faculty Web site

B.A., Kinnaird College, Pakistan. M.A., Punjab University, Pakistan. M.S., Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison. Special student, American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Academic specialization in historical sociology, with particular emphasis on the mass media, gender, and political economy. Author of Shifting Body Politics: Gender/Nation/State (New Delhi, Kali: Women Unlimited, 2004). Co-editor (with Cynthia Nelson), Situating Globalization: Views from Egypt (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2000). Currently working on a project in social history entitled “Memory and History in the Life of a City.” Contributor to books and journals on South Asia and the Middle East. Taught as visiting faculty at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the American University in Cairo, Egypt. Member, Board of Editorial Advisors, for Contributions to Indian Sociology;and member, Editorial Committee, MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project). Recipient of grants and fellowships from the Fulbright/Hays Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, and the Council on American Overseas Research Centers; past consultant to the Middle East and North Africa Program of the Social Science Research Council as well as the Population Council West Asia and North Africa Office (Cairo). SLC, 1987-

Sarah Wilcox

Courses: Media and Popular Culture, Thinking Gender: Inequalities and Identities, Health Policy/Health Activism

B.A., Wesleyan University. M.A., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. Areas of expertise include medical sociology, the sociology of science and knowledge, gender and sexuality, and the mass media; special interests in interactions among experts, laypeople, and social movements; current project entitled “Claiming Knowledge: Gay Communities, Science, and the Meaning of Genes” explores how ideas about biology and sexuality have been produced, circulated, contested, and negotiated within and outside of science; recipient of GLAAD Center for the Study of Media & Society grant for research on coverage of the politics of sexuality in regional media; taught at the University of Maine and Kent State University; recent articles in Critical Studies in Media Communication and the American Journal of Public Health.SLC, 2005-